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As a journalist I have written about social issues and international affairs for the Guardian, the Independent, New Internationalist, Huffington Post, Equal Times and the Big Issue in the North, among other titles. I now work at the University of Leeds as a qualified careers professional, helping international students fulfill their career ambitions

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George Galloway: 'Only a fool has no regrets and I'm certainly not a fool'

George Galloway looks as though he’s just rolled out of bed
and into his constituency office in Bradford West. It’s 10am and I’ve just been
informed the woman sitting next to me is booked into the same appointment slot as
me. Wiping sleep from his eyes the Respect MP turns to introduce himself and
swiftly resolves the problem. “Constituents come first,” he says wryly, and
they disappear into his office for 10 minutes.

More than a year has passed since Galloway’s remarkable
by-election victory here in 2012, yet glancing around the place one could be
forgiven for thinking he’d moved in yesterday.The walls are almost completely bare - save for an out of date, heart
shaped Hugo Chavez election flier and a notice board with a “boycott Israel”
poster pinned to it.

Anyone who watched his appearance on Question Time in June will have noted that while the youthful looks which once earned him
the nickname “Gorgeous George” have somewhat faded, his sharpness of mind and
oratory flair have not. He claims he may owe these talents to kissing the mythical
Blarney Stone in Ireland as a young boy, though he often feels anxious ahead of
big speeches and media appearances:

“The first question I always ask after coming off stage, to
my nearest, is ‘how was that?’ To which sometimes the answer is ‘well you’re
getting a standing ovation from several thousand people so how do you think?’"

Modesty is a trait rarely attributed to Galloway, but then
again few politicians could claim to possess it. His innate confidence has both
advantages and drawbacks. He makes regular appearances on current affairs
programmes, boasts a huge audience of nearly 150,000 Twitter followers and his
YouTube videos are among the most watched of any political figure in the world.

Two weeks ago a compilation package of his most entertaining
moments became available for download on i-Tunes, and it’s worth listening to. At
his best few can compete with him in a debate – even the late contrarian Christopher
Hitchens struggled when they did battle over the Iraq War in 2005, for it was
during the period shortly after the invasion of Iraq that he was at his most brilliant
as one of Britain’s leading anti-war voices.

Yet with his reputation as a fierce and principled debater
has come a level of fame he says he isn’t entirely comfortable with - a claim
which may come as a surprise to those who remember his ill-judged appearance on
Celebrity Big Brother. “You can’t eat your dinner for people coming across to get
their picture taken with you. Or the opposite, you can’t eat your dinner
because they’re glaring balefully at you,” he protests.

Photo by JK the Unwise/ Wikipedia Commons

Then there is his relationship with the media - including
the liberal press - who are largely hostile to his radical left wing politics. Over
the past year Galloway’s detractors have been granted more than one field day. Last
August it was his YouTube video on the Julian Assange rape allegations, in
which he remarked to near universal revulsion, “not everybody needs to be asked
prior to each insertion.” More recently he was accused of racism after a
YouTube video showed him storming out of a debate with an Israeli, citing his
opponent’s nationality as the reason for his exit.

Doesn’t it bother him that everything he says and does is scrutinised
by journalists seemingly waiting for him to slip up?

“Sure, but on all the big political things I’ve been proved
right and more and more people know that,” he counters. “Take this horrific
murder in Woolwich, a couple of months ago I asked David Cameron if he would
adumbrate the key differences between the throat cutting extremists that we’re
killing in Mali, and the throat cutting extremists we’re giving money to in
Syria. My argument is that fanning the flames of extremism, in some cases even
paying the extremists and giving them weapons, is a disaster waiting to
happen.”

Ever since Iraq and the 7/7 bombings, Galloway has been savagely
criticised for making precisely this point. Yet as with Iraq, public opinion polls suggest
it’s an argument he is winning. The problem is that while many people broadly
agree with him on the dangers of British intervention in the middle east, more
than a few – including members of his own party – have felt dismayed by his
sporadic outbursts on other issues. Salma Yaqoob, the former leader of Respect,
stepped down from her post in August following Galloway’s rape comments in what
was perceived to be a massive blow to the party. Galloway plays down its
significance.

“It’s a very minor point. If you went out on the streets of
Britain and asked people who Salma Yaqoob is, very few people would know who
she was...”

Perhaps, but she is widely considered to be an extremely
talented politician and speaker, I interject.

“Very talented, and I helped to encourage her, so on a
personal level I feel betrayed by it. But on a political and public level I
don’t think it’s very important at all. But personally yeah,” he concedes.

It’s difficult to escape the feeling that Galloway cuts a
somewhat isolated figure on the left. Several former members of Respect were
among a group of activists who recently set up a nationwide group called Left
Unity, aiming to heed filmmaker Ken Loach’s call for a new left party. Galloway
also appears to have been snubbed by The People’s Assembly, a growing
anti-austerity movement supported by almost every noted left wing voice in
Britain, from Owen Jones to Caroline Lucas.

“We’re the one that can win elections, the others cannot,
and that’s our role,” says Galloway somewhat dismissively, before adding, “But
we wish everybody on the left success in their endeavours.”

Surely he thinks it’s important for likeminded parties and
organisations to work together towards a common goal, like countering
austerity?

“Yes, but in the end you can only stand in elections as one
party. I don’t think this Assembly – although I’ve not been to any, I haven’t
been invited to any – I don’t think that they intend to become a party. But I
don’t have a lot of confidence in the historic left organisations or
personalities. I’ve had too much experience of them.”

His disillusionment with the British left doesn’t extend to
his comrades in Latin America, particularly Venezuela and Cuba, with whose
leadership he enjoys closer ties than arguably any other political figure in
the UK. Part of the problem with the left in Britain, he says, is that they
have become an unattractive proposition to ordinary people who might sympathise
with their aims, but are put off by the squabbling and “internecine hatred.”

“If I went out onto the streets now and started marketing
myself as “the left” I wouldn’t find many takers,” he says. Instead, for
inspiration he recalls a conversation between two of his greatest idols.

“I was once, I’m glad to say, present at a conversation
between Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro said to Chavez ‘stop
talking about socialism, just do socialist things and then people will say
‘that was a good thing! What’s that called?’”

The passing of Chavez was a significant moment for Galloway,
but he rejects the idea that the late
Venezuelan president’s death marked the beginning of the end for socialism in Latin
America. Chavez’s inimitable charisma will be a hard act to follow, he admits, but
his successor, Nicolas Maduro can pull it off.

“He [Maduro] seemed to grow a foot taller at the funeral in
terms of his presentation and ability to find the words and express them well,
and I feel that he will continue the ideas of Chavez or, as the slogan goes, to
‘build the Venezuela that Chavez dreamed of.’

It’s fair to say only a select few of Galloway’s trusted
comrades can expect to receive such high accolades from the Scotsman. Until
recently though, his comments regarding Labour leader Ed Miliband made it seem
like he might have formed a rather unlikely alliance back home. Following a
meeting between the two in Bradford, Galloway told the London Evening Standard
that he had found Miliband to be "quite impressive, physically and
intellectually."

But the friendship was short lived. Under pressure from his
party to explain his motivation behind the meeting, Miliband insisted they had
merely discussed boundary changes, a claim Galloway then dismissed as a lie
from “an unprincipled coward with the backbone of an amoeba.” Still, it seems
puzzling that he was initially so charmed by a man hardly aligned with his
political outlook.

“It’s about the flatness of the surrounding landscape.” He
explains, “He stood out in the desert, only in that he was an inch or two
higher than the surrounding landscape. He is better than the leader who went
before, who was better than the leader who went before. So at least the
direction of travel is in the right direction, but it’s very very slow and
hasn’t gone very far.”

To those who suspect he would secretly like to re-join the
Labour party which expelled him in 2003, his message is clear. On the issues
that affect his constituency – the bedroom tax, the public sector pay freeze
and all the cuts that have yet to be enforced - Labour, Galloway insists, have
ceased to be a party representing the interests of the working class.

“I’ve always said and I say it again now: If the Labour
party became the Labour party again, everybody on the left would have to
re-evaluate their position. But I have absolutely no confidence at all that
such a transformation will occur.”

Galloway doesn’t read any of the media criticisms of him
because, he says, there simply isn’t enough time. Instead he relies on
self-evaluation and the judgment of those within his inner circle. Before we
part I ask him whether he has any personal regrets from his life in politics
and for a second he looks as though he might divulge something, before swiftly
remembering where I’ve come from - the media.

“Well it wouldn’t profit me or what I stand for to tell you
that,” he smiles, “Just know that I have many regrets and that only a fool has
no regrets, and I’m certainly not a fool.”

A cordial handshake later he rushes off to attend to more
pressing matters, leaving me in no doubt where his priorities lie. After all,
constituents come first.

*Correction. This article originally stated that George Galloway was present at the funeral of Hugo Chavez. This error has since been corrected.

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